Page 3

COLE

S tacks of forms, spreadsheets, and bank statements sat on the desk before me.

It all told me the same thing. The pack was in absolute turmoil.

When they’d called and begged me to return after my father died, part of me thought they wanted a quick and easy succession plan.

No reason to go through the chaos of figuring out who to make the new alpha when you had one in the bloodline already.

This showed me that not only did they want an easy change-over of power, but they were desperate for help.

Somehow, my father had gotten the pack into a massive amount of debt. There was barely enough money left to keep them afloat. A couple accounts were in the negative—even the investments and stocks my father had bought over the years had been cashed out. Everything was gone.

I tossed a spreadsheet aside, and the sheet of paper spun in the air like a frisbee before fluttering to the ground.

None of this made any sense. I’d come home almost two months ago, and in all that time, I couldn’t figure out what he’d done with the money.

There were no outlandish purchases on any of the receipts he had filed away.

I hadn’t found any exotic cars or deeds to vacation houses.

The only thing the itemized statements showed was cash withdrawals rather than wire transfers or purchases.

None of them outlandish, though. What the hell had he done?

It made me anxious every time I sat down to figure it out.

It was time to do something I’d been putting off since coming back. My detective skills had been all used up. The only way to figure out what had happened was by asking someone who hadn’t been away for fifteen years.

I’d found an address book in my father’s desk. It had the numbers of his pack betas and enforcers. Men I’d known since birth, who were mysteriously absent from Harbor Mills. I’d asked about them, but all the other pack members clammed up and acted like they had no clue where they’d gone or why.

Ricky Danvers had been Dad’s right-hand man. The fact that he no longer lived in Harbor Mills was what confused me most. I found his number on the first page of the address book and gave him a call.

The phone rang and rang. I was about to give up and end the call when he finally answered.

“Hello? Who’s this?”

“Ricky Danvers?” I asked, hopeful I’d found the right man.

“That’s me. Who am I talking to? You sound familiar.”

“This is Cole Garrett, Ricky.”

There was a long pause before he finally spoke. “Well, damn, boy. I haven’t heard from you in a bit. How are you?”

“Honestly, Ricky? I’ve been better. You heard Dad died, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I did.”

I frowned and rested my elbow on the desk. “Why didn’t you come to the funeral? Why didn’t any of you? All the old betas and folks? What the hell is going on with this pack? I’ve been back for about eight weeks, and every damn thing is in disarray.”

“Are you taking over for Lance?” Ricky asked. “Is that what this call is about?”

“Most likely. I’m trying to get all the pack financials in order, but nothing is adding up.” I sighed, a weary and exhausted sound even to my own ears. “What happened?”

“I guess you wouldn’t have heard. Being out of touch with the pack for so long.”

“Heard what?” I asked, trying to keep the exasperation from my voice.

“It started about six or seven months ago. Lance started getting real strange. Wouldn’t talk to any of us, none of his advisors or pack elders. Isolated himself, you know?”

I didn’t know. I hadn’t spoken to my father in years.

In fact, the last time I’d talked to him was when I finally walked out the door after years of living under his roof.

Yet, that didn’t sound anything like Dad.

Even at his worst, he’d always had a soft spot for the familial aspect of the pack.

It was strange that he’d pushed his most trusted people away.

“We did some digging,” Ricky went on. “Found out the finances weren’t adding up.

Probably the same thing you discovered. Chris—you remember the pack enforcer?

—was the first one to bring it up. Your dad lost it.

Started cursing him out, screaming at him to mind his own business.

The rest of us stood up for him, told Lance he needed to be honest about whatever problems the pack was having.

Well, to put it lightly, he didn’t like that.

Kinda freaked out about it, to be honest.”

“I would say not,” I grunted.

“A day or two later, he demoted all of us. We weren’t in his inner circle anymore. Our services were no longer needed. He took it even further with Chris and outright banished him from the pack.”

This was the information everyone was too scared to tell me. No wonder. Something like this was unheard of. An alpha banishing his enforcer? It was insane.

“He banished him?”

“Yeah,” Ricky said, his voice low and grim. “Fucking crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. He ran the rest of us off a few weeks later. We found other packs to take us in.”

“And you guys never figured out what the hell was going on?” I exclaimed.

“No. He chucked us out before we could dig any deeper. Cole, I gotta be honest, something weird was going on. The last year or two, your dad was acting strange.”

“Okay,” I said, rubbing my forehead with my free hand. “Thanks for the information, Ricky.”

“No problem. Any time.”

“Hey, Ricky?”

“Yeah?”

“It sounds like things ended badly with you guys and Dad, but I’m in charge now. You all ever want to come on back home, you let me know. You’ll be welcomed back with open arms. I won’t turn my back on old friends like my father did. All right?”

Ricky chuckled softly. “That sounds good, Cole. I appreciate it. I’ll talk to the others. Most of us have settled in with new packs, but… well, there’s something nice about home.”

“Yeah,” I grunted. “Sure is. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Goodbye, Cole.”

I glared at the piles of papers, each one pointing to something that I couldn’t figure out.

What the hell had Dad done to get the pack into this situation?

Whatever it was, no one knew. As soon as his closest people had started to figure it out, he’d pushed them away, shoving them completely out of the pack before they could reveal his secrets.

The door of the office opened, and Farrah walked in.

“Hey, sis,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” she said curtly.

I sagged back in my chair as she paced the room, looking out of sorts and anxious. Nothing at all like her usual self.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Huh?” Her head snapped around to look at me. “Yeah. I’m fine. Did you figure anything out about the financial stuff?” she asked, obviously changing the subject, but I allowed it.

“Nothing more than I already told you.” I frowned at her in confusion. “Hey, did you know Dad banished the betas and the enforcer?”

She stopped pacing and froze in place. “What?” Her anxiety vanished, and she became more like her old self.

“Dad said they got pissed at him for not giving them more power over the pack, so they left. Said they got pissy with him and quit. When I got home and they weren’t around, I asked about them, but everyone gave me the same line. ”

“And you believed that? Farrah, you’ve known Ricky and the others as long as I have. Does that make sense at all to you?”

Sighing, she flopped into the seat opposite me.

“I didn’t question it. Honestly, I was still too shocked by his death to worry about other people.

I’ve been gone a long time. Long enough to not realize how bad off he was.

Cole, Dad was only fifty-seven when he died.

That’s not old. Not at all . Rumors are he was drinking heavily, and he’d gained weight, even with shifter metabolism.

I should have talked to you about Ricky and the others earlier, but it slipped my mind. ”

“Maybe he spent all the pack money on alcohol,” I said, half-joking.

“God, do you know how much liquor it takes to get a wolf drunk? If he kept drinking as much as he did after Mom died, you might be on to something.”

I grunted noncommittally. Even if he had, that wouldn’t explain the sheer amount of money that was missing. Someone should have been here to keep things in order.

That guilt I’d felt when I was first told of my father’s death crept back in.

Maybe if I hadn’t run off all those years ago, things would have turned out differently.

If I’d stayed, I could have stopped whatever had happened.

Farrah had been the first to return home after his death and had tried to put things in order, only to find absolute chaos.

She was the one who’d called me and begged me to return.

My sister and I had both been driven off in a similar way.

When Mom died, Dad changed. Not in a good way.

Neither Farrah nor I wanted to be anywhere near him.

Part of it was our bitterness toward him over the affair.

Dad’s side piece had gotten pregnant. It didn’t matter that doctors said you couldn’t actually die of a broken heart—it was what Farrah and I both believed.

When it all came out, and Dad admitted to the affair and the love child, I’d watched Mom shrivel like a dying plant over the next few years.

When she finally died, Dad had dived right into the bottle. Farrah and I left Harbor Mills as soon as we were old enough, leaving behind that chaos and heartache.

“Have you seen Dallas since you’ve been back?” I asked.

Farrah’s face fell, and she shook her head. “No. Our little brother has been mostly MIA.”